Sporadic commentary on the telecoms and IT market in Latvia and the Baltic States.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Hanging out at Freddy Chopin, Warsaw

Well, I have several hours to kill on my way to the Cisco Networkers event in Cannes. The flight they sponsored involves about six hours at Warsaw Fredrick Chopin Airport. Not such a bad place, though the seats are hard and I was very lucky to find a mooch outlet for my MacBook. As for wireless internet, perhaps I hit a winner after trying three different networks, all of which directed me to Polish-language sites that appeared to explain the pricing structure. PlusGSM was the only decipherable one, offering 900 minutes (much longer than I will be here, but there is a return leg) for 15 zloty or just over USD 5. The log in to Plus GSM was a bit of a mess and it rejected one of my two Visa cards, but at the end of the day (or the 15 minutes I spent fucking around with the network) it works find and it is not some astonishing USD 7.95 an hour or 10.95 for all day rip off that I recently saw in the US. Can't vouch for those figures, but it was pretty close. So I guess I got a good deal, unless the 9.00 PLN (that means Zloty) figure embedded in incomprehensible Polish texts in the other two (Orange and Era.pl) wireless network pages was what they charge for 900 minutes. Oh well, time crawls when you are waiting. I will watch some videos on my iPod, then recharge it. These chairs were installed by the Anti-Ass-bone League of Poland or something worse.

UPDATE: A group of around seven nicely dressed middle-aged Poles (?) arrived to the seating area around 1115 local and ate a packed lunch of sausage sandwiches, then broke out a small bottle of whiskey and a starting to have a merry time of it. Did I say the airport was boring?

Aight thanks mate. For the record - I'm here to study filmmaking. And work... maybe. I did go on a quest to find an adapter in Riga before I left, but every joint (including the legendary Elektrons) kad only US, Euro and UK plugs. Aussies use another kind (what is wrong with the world?).

Anyhow I bought the AirPort thingy and it has an extra plug, the same that can be used with the power adapter, so I'll be good.